New Hosting for my Business Website

Well that was messy and long winded to get sorted. Remind me not to do this again in a hurry. At least I am safe and nearly sorted for the next three years.

I had been meaning to get new hosting for my website so I could use PLUGINS, SEO and GOOGLE ANALYTICS… and YAY I have finally done it, though it was a journey and a half of hair pulling frustration on various days. Actually most of the week, In fact it is a brand new learning curve for me to get things done.

A big thank you to Courtney Cannon for her help and advice and a special thanks to all the staff who help at InMotion Hosting. They are fabulous on chat and email. Quick to respond and happy to help. If it wasn’t for them, I doubt I would’ve sorted this transferring of my website out. It was a lot messier than it should’ve been. Why? you may ask.

TRANSFERING A FREE WORDPRESS WEBSITE

All I can say is DON’T EVEN TRY UNLESS YOU ARE A TECH PERSON. Obviously I’m not, though I am good with a fair amount of technology, the behind the scenes and the HTML is way beyond my knowledge. To this day I wish I had been allowed to do computer studies at high school. It wasn’t a FAD after all, like my mother thought.

The back up you can download on the FREE WORDPRESS is an XML File and you can also download an MEDIA File. This is where it can get cranky depending on who you use as for hosting your website. I have no idea if it is the same, though I’m sure it must be similar. I have seen behind the scenes before on a CPANEL, just not for about five years, so things have changed. The advances in technology continue to grow and leave many of us behind.

Once you have the files you can upload them to your FILE MANAGER… I’m not sure what happens from there. However you can INSTALL your website yourself if you know how. My problem came when they asked for a FTP Path. I had no idea what it was, let alone where to find it. A lovely person on InMotion chat helped me through this. Meanwhile I had emailed WORDPRESS (you can’t get CHAT on a FREE SITE) and they good over 48 hours to reply. Which is when the frustration hit. When I did get a reply… The information was something I’d already thought of two days prior, however the tech said don’t do it not worth…etc. I couldn’t anyway because I’d already transferred my DOMAIN NAME and I couldn’t get into my WORDPRESS ACCOUNT. More frustration.

At one stage, I had uploaded the XML Files over my WORDPRESS SITE instead of the new one, which doubled up all the pages. It took me 24 hours to work out how to get rid of it.

I did ask InMotion Hosting to do the Transfer, apparently, you need a SQL File to do so and FREE WORDPRESS BACKUP doesn’t have one. Meanwhile, my new website looked a mess, wrong colours, only had two pages, the FRONT PAGE was not my HOME PAGE and once again InMotion Chat came to the rescue and he redirected to my HOME PAGE and we got rid of the FRONT PAGE for something in Sweden. It was weird. He also assisted me by deleting my website which was horrible and I finally set in motion my Transfer with the Transfer People. I was to scared to do it by this stage.

WHAT I HAD TO DO

Once WordPress has sorted my website out and gave it a FREE Domain name, I sign in and did what I should’ve done a few days previous, which was buy a MONTLY BUSINESS PLAN with WORDPRESS… 

Yeah I hear you… BUT YOU’RE MOVING YOUR WEBSITE…

First of all I didn’t know they did MONTHLY PAYMENTS… It was always for a year and all the searches I did a few days prior all said NO MONTLY… etc. After talking to wordpress via email (waiting another two days) it seems they do and  you can get a REFUND if you need. I paid the $33 odd dollars and refreshed my website looking for the back up details I needed. HURRAY, they were there and NO WAY was I touching it.  The guy on chat at InMotion had sorted out my website there and deleted the stuffed up pages and I went to the guys who do the TRANSFERS filling in the request form and hoping for the best.

WHOOP. IT WORKED … I HAVE A WEBSITE 

All I have to do now is learn how to use the darn thing… With a CPanel and the WordPress Admin, it’s all different. I can do an AMP Edit or and WordPress Edit. Watch this space for an update… Hopefully this part won’t be to frustrating. I love computers… Now to learn how to use the Plugins.